The woman reads the sentence. Jeers are shouted from the crowd. A bottle shatters at the Jackal’s feet. A stone splits his forehead. But he does not blink or buckle. He stands proud and vain as they loop the noose around his neck. I wish this would bring Pax back to us. That Quinn and Roque and Eo could live again, but this man has carved his mark in the world. The Jackal of Mars will never be forgotten.
The White moves for the lever, snow gathering on Adrius’s hair. Mustang swallows. And the trapdoor opens. On Mars there’s not much gravity, so you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it. On Luna there’s even less. But no one comes forward from the crowd as the White extends the invitation. Not a soul lifts a finger as the Jackal’s legs kick and his face purples. There’s a stillness in me watching the sight. As if I’m a million kilometers away. I cannot feel for him. Not now. Not after all he’s done. But I know Mustang does. I know this tears her apart. So I lightly squeeze her hand and guide her forward. She moves across the snow in a daze to grip her twin brother’s feet. Looking up at him as if this were a dream. She whispers something and, lowering her head, she pulls down, showing him he was loved, even at the end.
In the weeks following the bombing of Luna and the ascension of Mustang, the world has changed. Millions lost their lives, but for the first time there is hope. In the aftermath of her speech to the Senate, dozens of Gold ships defected, joining the forces of Orion and Victra. The Ash Lord did his best to rally his navy, but with Luna burning, his fleet fracturing, and Mustang as Sovereign, it was all he could do to keep his own ships from falling into enemy hands. He retreated to Mercury with the core of his forces.
In his absence, Mustang has secured the cooperation of much of the military, particularly the Gray Legions and Obsidian slave-knights. She has used this political muscle to take the first steps to dismantling the Color Hierarchy and the Gold grip on military power. The Senate has been disbanded. The Board of Quality Control has been dissolved. Thousands face charges of crimes against humanity. Justice will not be so quick as it was with the Jackal, or so clean, but we will do the best we can.
I thought I might be able to rest after Octavia was dead, but we are not without enemies. Romulus and the Moon Lords remain on the Rim. The Ash Lord aims to rally Mercury and Venus. Gold warlords have begun carving out claims. And Luna itself is a disaster. Overrun by riots and shortages of food and spreading radiation. She will survive, but I doubt she will ever look the same, no matter how much Quicksilver promises to rebuild the city to even greater heights.
My own body is in recovery. Mickey and Virany reattached my hand, which I retrieved from the Jackal’s shuttle that set down on Luna. It will be months before I can write again, much less use a blade. Though I hope I have less cause for that in the coming days.
In my youth, I thought I would destroy the Society. Dismantle its customs. Shatter the chains and something new and beautiful would simply grow from the ashes. That’s not how the world works. This compromised victory is the best mankind could hope for. Change will come slower than Dancer or the Sons want, but it will come without the price of anarchy.
So we hope.
Under the supervision of Holiday, Sefi has set off to Mars to begin the slow process of freeing the rest of her people, visiting the poles with medicine instead of weapons. I remember how dark her eyes seemed when she looked at one of the Jackal’s nuclear craters in person. For now, she’s embraced the legacy of her brother, and plans to settle on warmer land set aside for her people on Mars. Though she wishes to keep her people from the alien cities, I think she knows deep down that she will not be able to control them. The Obsidians will leave their prisons. They will grow curious, spread, and assimilate. Their world will never be the same. Nor will that of my people. Soon I will return to Mars to help Dancer lead the migration of Reds to the surface. Many will stay and continue the lives they know. But for others, there will be a chance for life under the sky.
I said farewell to Cassius the day before last as he departed Luna. Mustang wanted him to stay and help us shape a new, fairer system of justice. But he’s had enough of politics. “You don’t have to go,” I told him as I stood with him on the landing pad.
“There’s nothing for me here but memories,” he said. “I’ve been living my life too long for others. I want to see what else is out there. You can’t fault me for that.”
“And the boy?” I asked, nodding to Lysander, who moved into the ship carrying a satchel of belongings. “Sevro thinks it’s a mistake to let him live. What were his words? ‘It’s like leaving a pitviper egg under your seat. Sooner or later it’s gonna hatch.’ ”
“And what do you think?”
“I think it’s a different world. So we should act like it. He’s got Lorn’s blood in his veins as much as he’s got Octavia’s. Not that blood makes a difference anymore.”
My tall friend smiled fondly at me. “He reminds me of Julian. He’s a good soul, despite everything. I’ll raise him right. Away from all this.” He extended a hand, not to shake mine, but to give me the ring he took from my finger the night Lorn and Fitchner died. I closed his hand back around it.
“That belongs to Julian,” I said.
He nodded softly. “Thank you…brother.” And there, on a citadel landing platform in what was once the heart of Gold power, Cassius au Bellona and I shake hands and say farewell, almost six years to the day since we first met.
—
Weeks later, I watch the waves lap at the shore as a gull careens overhead. Whitecaps mark the dark water that lashes the northern beach’s sea stacks. Mustang and I set our little two-person flier down on the east-northeast coast of the Pacific Rim, at the edge of a rain forest on a great peninsula. Moss grows on the rocks, on the trees. The air is crisp. Just cold enough to see your breath. It is my first time on Earth, but I feel like my spirit has come home. “Eo would have loved it here, wouldn’t she?” Mustang asks me. She wears a black coat with the collar pulled up around her neck. Her new Praetorian bodyguards sit in the rocks a half kilometer off.
“Yes,” I say. “She would have.” A place like this is the beating heart of our songs. Not a warm beach or a tropical paradise. This wild land is full of mystery. It holds its secrets covetously behind arms of fog and veils of pine needles. Its pleasures, like its secrets, must be earned. It reminds me of my dreams of the Vale. The smoke from the fire we made of driftwood rises diagonally across the horizon.